Neurosurgeon and attorney Dr. Larry Schlachter makes a case that most patients enter the healtyhcare system without any idea of the risks they face, due to a medical culture that denies there is a patient safety problem. He argues that medical culture actively avoids transparency, perpetuates an atmosphere of blind deference to doctors, and protects dangerous doctors from any accountability.
Drawing on 23 years of experience, Dr. Schlachter provides unbelievable stories that illustrate the host of risks patients face whenever they seek diagnostic evaluation or go under the knife. This book provides an all-access pass to the inner sanctums of the health care citadel, exposing the cultural flaws that fuel doctor’s egos and outlining the steps every patent should take to protect himself or herself.
“Malpractice is an honest view of what our broken health-care system looks like. We lost our only child to preventable death because the system allowed an incompetent surgeon to practice. Dr. Schlachter analyzes the challenges facing patients and caregivers in a way health-care consumers and professionals alike can learn from.” – Patricia J. Skolnik, President, Citizens for Patient Safety, LLC
“Malpractice will not make Dr. Schlachter many friends in the health-care industry, but it starts a conversation we must have if patient safety is truly our goal. We need more doctors like him professionals willing to acknowledge the risks created by a medical culture that puts doctors ahead of patients, and willing to fight for meaningful changes that will lead to better outcomes for patients and providers alike.” – Dr. Marty Makary, Johns Hopkins surgeon, patient-safety advocate, and author of Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care
Dr. Schlachter brings the same insight and honesty to Malpractice that he brings to examining cases in which patients have been terribly wronged. His astute analysis is a bitter pill for an industry that for many years has avoided the hardest conversations about patient safety, but it is perhaps the only prescription that can save us.” – Dr. Michael Dogali, MDCM, FACS, president of Pacific Neurosurgery
Preface of the book
When you seek health care as a patient, you probably believe that everyone involved is focused on you, is alert, caring, and competent, and that when they operate on you, they know W W exactly what they are doing. You trust that your health-care providers are people of integrity, and if they made a serious mistake that harmed you, they would be honest about it.
Unfortunately, the truth is that every doctor who has been practicing for any length of time has harmed a patient. Nobody bats 1.000. Many doctors, if not most, have killed at least one patient. Some of these injuries and deaths are unpreventable. However, the horrible reality is that hundreds of thousands of pa- tients die, and many more are forever maimed, by preventable medical errors every year.
To make matters worse, most of their victims are left with no recourse. Those who pursue legal action often meet a court system heavily weighted in favor of doctors and their insurance companies.
My book is intended for patients, which includes all of us, because sooner or later we will all need medical care. When that day comes, we want to believe that medical practitioners and hospitals are held to the highest professional and ethical standards. Regrettably, this is not the case. Insiders are well aware of this. Patients, on the other hand, rarely understand that the hospital can be a very dangerous place and that errors and negligence are commonplace, and, even worse, intentionally covered up.
This book is about the harm doctors do to patients, and the tortuous path patients must take to learn the truth of what happened to them and to find justice. It is about the culture and attitudes that make mistakes more prevalent than necessary.
The real concern of this book is that there are unnecessary and preventable injuries occurring in our healthcare system. They need to be reduced as much as possible.
Larry Schlachter, DDS, MD, JD
retired neurosurgeon and attorney.